Author and commentator Paul Waldman wrote an article for MSNBC on Wednesday describing a recent Department of Justice investigation into George Mason University’s DEI practices. He described the investigation as an “attack” and “politicization of justice.” Waldman’s hypocrisy and omission of key facts of the issue portrayed a false crusade of injustice by President Trump’s DOJ.
Waldman began the article criticizing the DOJ for opening an investigation on George Mason’s president for continuing to promote Diversity Equity and Inclusion despite an Executive Order outlawing it from public universities. The “attack” on the university wasn’t started by random “conservative critics” as the article stated. The complaint that led to the investigation came directly from professors at the University.
GMU president Gregory Washington sent a university-wide email in March of 2025 announcing that DEI would be changed to the Office of Access, Compliance, and Community. Stating there was allegedly nothing for GMU to change about its hiring process.
Washington’s policies included “diversity cluster hire initiatives.” Additionally, once candidates have cleared a certain “bar” of requirements, GMU would fill the positions based on “diversity…even if that candidate may not have better credentials than the other candidate.”
George Mason received millions of dollars in federal funding for research grants that in turn supplied money for staffing. In 2023, George Mason averaged 7.4 DEI personnel per 100 faculty members. Beating out top liberal schools like Oregon, Cal Berkley, and University of Michigan. Boasting job titles like director of DEI strategic partnerships and initiatives, DEI case coordinator for community engagement, director of LGBTQ+ resources center, and assistant director for student engagement for racial justice. The sample included 20 different DEI job titles.
The hypocrisy came when Waldman strictly tied Trump’s DOJ to partisanship, stating they only worked in the interest of the president. Presidents have been hand picking their attorneys generals since the 1789 Judiciary Act.
When Biden appointed Merrick Garland, he went on to open an investigation on Trump three days after he announced he was running for the 2024 election. What about when the Biden administration DOJ announced they would not charge him after learning that he kept Obama-era classified documents?
Waldman went on to call the investigation a mobilization “against elite universities, as Trump seems eager to cripple any institution where liberal ideas might gain a foothold.”
It’s not the destruction of “liberal ideas.” It’s the dismantling of sending tax payer money to public universities that hire candidates based on race over merit.
As if his stance couldn’t get more insane, he compared the DOJ to a “legal brownshirt militia.”
The “brownshirts” were a paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party that quite literally facilitated the killing of political opponents. Quite the egregious stretch when you realize the DOJ was just investigating if a publicly funded university was choosing to hire people based on race instead of actual qualifications.
Waldman was also the author of White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. The book embodied the reason Democrats lost the election, because calling a large voting demographic racist and uneducated as their reason for voting Republican was surprisingly not a winning strategy.
